


All The Life On Earth

by jaxstronomy



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles X
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 04:49:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7877218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaxstronomy/pseuds/jaxstronomy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My small contribution to the Chimera AU. No archive warnings because this is not a graphic depiction of violence per se, but it is a traumatic experience from the perspective character's point of view.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

All the life on Earth. A beautiful thought, on the surface. All the life on Earth includes the snow leopard on the mountain peak, the undulations of fan coral in sunlit reefs, and the flashes of fireflies on warm summer nights. Yet, all the life on Earth includes parasitic wasps, virulent diseases, and anglerfish luring their prey with the promise of light. Humanity romanticizes nature, bends it into a symbol, a representation of our ideals. Nature, however, knows only one virtue - survival.

Drowning in the very stuff of life. Every shred of her being struggled against that ironic end, clawing towards the surface, lungs burning and heart racing. A thousand voices screamed in her head - incoherent rage, abject terror, the all-consuming urge to just stop and pray that all this would go away. Pain came from nowhere, and from everywhere - the purest experience of pain, unbound from the tyranny of context.

A distinct sensation, glass tearing into flesh three meters past her hands. She pulled, pushing the shards deeper into that distant point and throwing herself out of the protoplasm. Relief, for a moment, as air rushed into her lungs.

She opened her eyes and screamed.

A thousand repeating blurs streaked with searing ultraviolet. Flickers of motion on all sides, tigers hiding in the grass. The smallest details of a gatling gun’s scuffed surface. Everything smeared, as if viewed underwater. The perception of heat rising from the mice in front of her. The urge to strike.

A male voice, yelling her name. Or was it the wingbeats of a hawk diving down from the sky, or a wounded calf, separated from the herd and ripe for the slaughter? Was that a muzzle flash, or was it a lightning strike, a wildfire burning the sagebrush to ash? She roared, claws extending, wings beating, venom rushing through her fangs.

She was all the life on Earth. And she was going to survive.


	2. Epilogue

BLADE Archive: CLASSIFIED  
Audio: Frye Christoph, debriefing after the incident at the Lifehold Core

“You already told me it’s an order. I still don’t want to talk about what happened in the fucking Core.”

“Just the facts? What the hell kind of facts do you want from me? Here’s the facts. The Core’s safe, Lao’s gone, and Mina’s dead. That enough for you?”

“How she - no. Not talking about how she fucking died. You can ask the colonel about that one. She’ll give you a flawless fucking report with all the details in order.”

“If it’ll get you off my back. Fine. When the floor cracked, Lin was on the edge. Mina saved her. Then fell in. I was hurt bad after the fight with that Ganglion son of a bitch, couldn’t move fast enough - would have gone in after her.”

“What came out -”

“You just push pencils all day, don’t you? You ever stand in front of a Sphinx? A Caro? Not even a fucking Grex? Then you don’t know shit about what that thing was. Biggest nastiest fuck-off predator I’ve seen in my life.” 

“Trust me. She was gone before I pulled the trigger. I… I tried, I goddamn tried, and all it did was make her turn on me first…”

“Fuck your condolences. File the damn report and let me out of here. Going to take a lot of drinking to forget this.”


End file.
